Books of 2024: Week 4 - Cujo

Stephen King tells Cody a story about a rabid dog.

CUJO by Stephen King

Cujo is a fascinating addition to Stephen King’s bibliography – and it happens to be a book that he barely remembers writing at all, because he did so while at the height of his struggle with alcoholism. Reading through it with that in mind, it’s stunning that the book even makes sense, let alone that King still managed to make it detailed and engrossing while drinking himself into oblivion. Is King so talented that his ability still shines through while he’s deep under the influence, or did he have to do a whole lot of editing during his sober moments?

Everyone knows that Cujo is about a rabid dog. The book and its film adaptation became so popular, people reference the titular dog quite often... and in most cases, it doesn’t even cross their minds that King got the name from the news, as Cujo was the (media’s misspelling of the) alias used by one of the Symbionese Liberation Army members responsible for the kidnapping and brainwashing of Patty Hearst. But, proving that he was never one to be afraid of writing a long build-up, King waits until we’re 150 pages deep into Cujo’s page count of 400 before he even has the rabid Saint Bernard attack anybody. Cujo is bitten by a rabid bat early in the book and spends the early parts of the book gradually getting sicker and sicker, but much of those first 150 pages are taken up by the drama of everyday life.

The main characters are the Trenton family, who moved from New York City to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine a few years earlier. Vic Trenton owns an advertising company, and has to deal with a business emergency when the red dye in a cereal that his company has created the advertisements for starts causing children to poop and puke red... which, of course, at first scares parents into thinking their kids have internal bleeding. While Vic works to save the cereal company’s reputation, he also discovers that his wife Donna has been having – but recently ended – an affair with a local guy, a real scumbag named Steve Kemp. Vic and Donna are just starting to patch up their relationship when work takes Vic out of town.

Meanwhile, there are also chapters that center on a Castle Rock woman named Charity Camber, who badly wants to visit her sister in Connecticut with her young son, but her abusive husband Joe, who runs an auto shop in the barn on their property, doesn’t like Charity to go anywhere. Still, when Charity brings up the idea of going to Connecticut, Joe comes around to agreeing to let her go because he sees it as an opportunity to go on a Boston adventure with his best drinking buddy while she’s out. Why are we spending so much time with all this drama? Because it’s setting the stage for a series of circumstances and some coincidences that will allow Donna Trenton and her 4-year-old son Tad to become trapped in her malfunctioning Pinto on the Camber property for a couple days, with no one around to help her while the Camber’s rabid dog waits outside the car, waiting for the chance to tear Donna and Tad apart.

There are still passages in Cujo that seem unnecessary, some asides with at least one other Castle Rock resident that don’t add all that much to the story, but for the most part it all works. And while the threat of a rabid Saint Bernard is a very down-to-earth concept, there’s also a supernatural angle to the book where it’s implied that the situation with Cujo also has some kind of connection to both a dead serial killer that used to stalk Castle Rock (as seen in the book The Dead Zone) and the monster that Tad fears is lurking in his closet. A being that King strongly implies might be real.

Once Donna and Tad are trapped in the Pinto by Cujo, reading the book almost becomes a frustrating experience, but for a good reason. The reader becomes so invested in seeing how that situation is going to play out, it can be irritating to go away from that scenario and have to read more pages about Vic’s advertising problems, Charity’s time in Connecticut, or even Steve Kemp acting like a douchebag. We want to get back to Donna and Tad. But King ties all of these threads together nicely in the end.

It’s a good story, even though it’s heartbreakingly tragic. It’s deeply sad for everyone involved, from the various people who are attacked by Cujo, to Cujo himself. He was a good dog until that bat bit him and sickness drove him out of his mind. The things that happen aren’t really Cujo’s fault. It was just terrible luck.

Cujo is a bit too sad for me to consider it one of my favorite King books, but he certainly did write a hell of a book about such a simple idea as a rabid dog. Even though he was hammered while he was writing it.